1. I now have appliances in the kitchen, and I will soon have a sink and a countertop, should certain lying-ass contractors ever decide to stop dicking around and deliver it. Hey, isn't there a housing slump, crash, slide, or whatever onomatopoeic word economists like to use these days? Shouldn't you guys be unemployed right now? You are about to be, if you do not install my goddamn countertop in the near future. Harrumph.

2. Today I saw a car that was absolutely bespattered with bird shit, in every place imaginable. It almost looked deliberate, like the birds were trying to create their own art car. Express yourselves, birds! Express yourselves with your horrifying artistic medium!

4. My kid and I have been having some really odd conversations. She is interested in money and coins of all denominations (Nora, you are entry-level geek already with the gifted school and the chess playing---please do not become a numismatist as well), but was puzzled by a photo of a half dollar in one of her coin books. I explained what it was and how those coins are not really around much.

Nora: Why not?Me: I don't know. People couldn't get used to it and it didn't fit in coin slots and stuff.Nora: What is the half dollar made of?Me: Uh...metal. I don't know what kind. [ed. note: mostly copper, these days] Nora: Who is the president on it?Me: John F. Kennedy. Nora: But he is not president now. Is he dead?Me: Yes.Nora: How did he die?Me: Well...he was shot.

[Shocked silence.]

Nora: But...who SHOT him?Me: A bad guy. [ed. note: or so the story goes.] His name was Lee Harvey Oswald. Nora: WHY?Me: No one really knows. He was just sick in his brain, I guess. Nora: Did they ask him why? When the bad guy was in jail?Me: Uh, funny story, actually... [here I sort of try to explain how Oswald himself was killed and never went to trial]

[Another lengthy shocked silence.]

Nora [meaningfully]: Well that's PRETTY WEIRD.Me: A lot of people agree with you.

So now my five-year-old is an assassination nut. We have gone on to discuss the more cut-and-dried presidential assassinations---Garfield (shot by a regular old crazy person, took forever to die), Lincoln (shot by Confederate sympathizer), and McKinley (shot by anarchist). Nora likes those, but she keeps returning to Kennedy and ruminating aloud about the crime's unsolved nature (well, unsolved in the court of public opinion anyway, the Warren Commission would beg to differ). She is mostly annoyed by how we can't interrogate Oswald and I feel for her, because if anyone could have gotten to the bottom of that mess it would be Nora.